The World as Will and Idea — Schopenhauer — John Shaqi
The World as Will and Idea
Schopenhauer · German
To these cases all combinations of concepts may be referred, and from them
the entire doctrine of the judgment, its conversion, contraposition,
equipollence, disjunction (this according to the third figure) may be
deduced. From these also may be derived the properties of the judgment,
upon which Kant based his pretended categories of the understanding, with
the exception however of the hypothetical form, which is not a combination
of concepts, but of judgments. A full account is given in the Appendix of
“Modality,” and indeed of every property of judgments on which the
categories are founded.
With regard to the possible combinations of concepts which we have given,
it has only further to be remarked that they may also be combined with
each other in many ways. For example, the fourth figure with the second.
Only if one sphere, which partly or wholly contains another, is itself
contained in a third sphere, do these together exemplify the syllogism in
the first figure, _i.e._, that combination of judgments, by means of which
it is known that a concept which is partly or wholly contained in another
concept, is also contained in a third concept, which again contains the
first: and also, conversely, the negation; the pictorial representation of
which can, of course, only be two connected spheres which do not lie
within a third sphere. If many spheres are brought together in this way we
get a long train of syllogisms. This schematism of concepts, which has
already been fairly well explained in more than one textbook, may be used
as the foundation of the doctrine of the judgment, and indeed of the whole
syllogistic theory, and in this way the treatment of both becomes very
easy and simple. Because, through it, all syllogistic rules may be seen in
their origin, and may be deduced and explained. It is not necessary,
however, to load the memory with these rules, as logic is never of
practical use, but has only a theoretical interest for philosophy. For
although it may be said that logic is related to rational thinking as
thorough-bass is to music, or less exactly, as ethics is to virtue, or
æsthetics to art; we must yet remember that no one ever became an artist
by the study of æsthetics; that a noble character was never formed by the
study of ethics; that long before Rameau, men composed correctly and
beautifully, and that we do not need to know thorough-bass in order to
detect discords: and just as little do we need to know logic in order to
avoid being misled by fallacies. Yet it must be conceded that
thorough-bass is of the greatest use in the practice of musical
composition, although it may not be necessary for the understanding of it;
and indeed æsthetics and even ethics, though in a much less degree, and
for the most part negatively, may be of some use in practice, so that we
cannot deny them all practical worth, but of logic even this much cannot
be conceded. It is nothing more than the knowledge in the abstract of what